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World Tone Proposition
Brainstorming, part 2: Electric Scootaloo Fellow worldsingers, we have made some important progress in crafting our world, and hosted our first brainstorming session. As comrade Tactical pointed out, our world currently lacks an objective, a singular idea, a certain tone that would unite all of our work into a coherent whole. Continuing our efforts without finding this central idea first would be counterproductive. That said, our first brainstorming did not have that as its goal. And it certainly wasn’t fruitless either. It served as a long-awaited release for the creative geniuses in our team tired from all the discussions and deliberations—and furthermore, it proved that we can come together to brainstorm and discuss our ideas. The categories of ideas will serve as the basis for our organization at a later stage, with many other categories added for brainstorming. The different ideas brainstormed present a rough picture of the mindset we have and the content we might want to see in the world, which is just as useful for the author as it is for the other collaborators, as you often don’t know what you exactly want until you show it to others. And finally, our brainstorming session showed how different all of our wishes and ideas are, which means that we must put extra emphasis on giving all authors individual freedom to work within the common theme. But before that, we must have this nucleus to our world. As I’ve stated before, the overall method of creating for Worldsingers can be roughly envisioned as a series of concentric circles. We have the global topics like cosmology, magic, and the like which will be determined by the majority of members, and within these frameworks, smaller teams of collaborators or individual authors will work on the details, creating separate entities and regions to inhabit the world. This approach provides both consistency and creative freedom, and at the same time, points us to the two main principles that must be adhered to in order to make the central idea of the world viable. Firstly, the world must contain an overarching ideas, themes, and narratives that would make it stand out from others. Take any successful setting, and try to describe it using as few words as possible. You will notice that every setting, be it Star Wars, Dark Sun, or Cthulhutech, can be distilled to a sort of thematic core that gives them a distinct feel on every level. If you expand your description, certain elements and narrative threads will emerge that permeate the setting and are the biggest “factors at play,” like the unification of magic and technology and the incessant wars between corporations in Shadowrun. These elements can be anything—magic, religion, global organizations, and even thematic threads are just some examples. If we simply create the world piece-by-piece, without working inside a common thematic framework, our world will be a patchwork quilt lacking a bigger picture. And so our first principle is this—the world must contain these greater elements, or have the creative capacity to contain them, and that these elements must be interesting and universal enough that they could be freely used by any author on any level of worldbuilding process to enrich their work. The second principle works in the opposite direction to ensure that we have enough creative freedom and diversity. To be interesting enough to maintain our own commitment to Worldsingers, we should have enough autonomy and freedom to create our own personal content and narratives on the lower level of worldbuilding. Besides creative freedom for the sake of freedom, it will also ensure that our world will be diverse and have as many ideas as possible. Ideally, each region would have it’s own overarching feel while still being a part of the greater world, so that a country on one side of the world could be an objectivist hell-hole styled after the French revolution while another country on the other side of the world could be a thriving democracy where every single citizen just happens to be undead. Taking that into account, the second principle can be summarized—to not impose too many strong limits and obligations on the lower level of worldbuilding, and to allow as many different separate narratives, settings, and elements to be developed within the overarching structure of the world. There is another principle that I would like to suggest. It is something that I have discussed before and it concerns the practice of idea seeding. It makes sense for us to construct our world with the principle that it invite as much experimentation and exploration from people besides the original author as possible. This is done by utilizing the most creative and interesting of ideas and purposefully leaving room for outside interpretation. There are two major methods of doing this, and the principle can be applied on any level of worldbuilding. The first is to create possibilities for narrative threads by presenting interesting ideas. Think of the “adventure seeds” in gamebooks as an example. You don’t necessarily need to supply those threads yourself, but a certain outlook must be present within the canon to invite such ideas. Another method is to create interesting and compelling elements that invite further exploration. An entire country was one day swallowed by an immense explosion and covered in thick fog that never extends beyond the border posts. What happened? What is going on inside right now? Nobody knows. Hopefully, these sorts ideas will appeal to other authors to create their own narratives and content for the world, canon or not. Thus, the third principle is to adopt this practice of “idea seeding” and create a world with plenty of possibilities for exploration. Now that these principles have been identified, I propose the following method for finding the central idea of our future world. We will vote on the best in a collection of setting proposals, short descriptions of the core elements of each world. The members of worldsingers will create as many of these proposals we care, either individually or as a group or groups. Once several top ideas are identified, we will expand on each and then vote on these expanded proposals, finally determining the one that suits our interests the most. There are several reasons for adopting this method. First is that we must decide using particulars. Voting on vague things like “Sci-Fi vs. Fantasy” or “Cynical vs. Idealistic” is pointless. What if different authors have different understandings of “Cynical” or “Fantasy”? What if someone has an idea that combines the two? Another reason is that we often don’t know what we want before we state it. So someone voting for a Fantasy setting might actually have a Diesel-punk schizo-tech idea set on a blown-up planet drifting in space, its inhabitants getting around on giant flying insects that can survive in space that doesn’t even work like normal vacuum. The reason for making as many proposals as we can is that the more ideas we have, the easier it will be for us to decide. Sounds counterintuitive, but the more options you have, the easier it becomes for you to define your selection criteria and the quicker you eliminate the worst ideas. This, in turn, makes selecting the best easier because you have already decided what “best” means for you. The proposals will look like this. Each will contain just the most important, central concepts of the world and its tone, the concepts that will be expanded upon and will define the world once worldbuilding starts in earnest. The proposal should be no longer than a page (400-800 words) and contain only the most defining elements. At the same time, they should be specific enough to suggest how the finished world might look. One device that can be employed to give more meat to the proposal is to list 10 (or a different number) of things that are most important to the world, either as elements of the world itself or the ideas used in crafting the tone. Listing a few inspirations could also help. As an example, I suggest turning to the DnD setting Eberron, which was created on a similar system. The tone adopted by the setting can be summed up as a combination of traditional medieval fantasy with pulp action and dark adventure. The creators aimed to give as much “cinematic flare” as possible to the setting, giving it the “action movie” feel that distinguishes Eberron from other settings. In its world, Eberron explored some interesting variations on common fantasy tropes. Advanced magic allowed the construction of towering skyscrapers in the wealthiest of cities, and the creation of things like the arcane telegraph and a network of lightning-powered railroads. The nations of the world have just emerged from a devastating world war, and its scars remain on the face of the world. A thriving aristocracy of the merchant Great Houses controls most of the world’s economy through their mastery of the arcane Dragonmarks. These are just the biggest, most prevalent elements of the setting, and they do not capture the full breadth and diversity of the setting and the depth of the themes presented. But they do help establish the overall tone and idea of the world. The creators also present a list of “ten things you need to know about Eberron” which contains not only the most important elements of the setting such as the Dragonmark houses and the Last War, but also thematic elements such as the focus on adventure and the progressive nature of magic. They also list several classic adventure movies as influences. I leave you with these ideas and invite you to discuss and use them if you see them workable enough. Hopefully, with a structure and objective to our brainstorming, we will have enough focus to see our project through this next stage. Writer Number 25, signing out. P.S.: Maybe I should drop the whole prose shindig and become an essayist instead…